MaKey MaKey: Replace Your Touch Screen With Bananas

Computers and bananas, bananas and computers. If your dream is to use bananas to control your computer, you’re in luck. Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, both final-year Ph.D. students at the MIT Media Lab, are about to mass produce a nifty invention kit called MaKey MaKkey — a tool that can turn almost any object into an input device.

The kit consists of a circuit board, alligator clips and USB cable. It’s completely plug-and-play, so you won’t have to worry about soldering or installing any special drivers. To get started, all you have to do is connect the circuit board to your computer with the USB cable and map specific commands on the circuit board to any objects using alligator clips.

The possibilities are only limited by your creativity (but please, don’t use your grandma as suggested on the project page), as shown in the video below:

The project has already received over $150,000 on Kickstarter, way over its $25,000 goal. The funding will run until June 12th, so there’s still time to pledge (minimum $35) if you wish to get your hands on one of these kits.